I have upgraded Annotations from 3.2.0.ga to 3.3.0.GA. Also using Hibernate 3.2.2.ga and Hibernate Tools 3.2.0.beta8.

Since the upgrade, when generating the ddl the table columns are ordered alphabetically rather than the order established in the POJO. Is there a property setting to restore the POJO ordering? In the meantime, I have reverted to the previous Annotations version.

Unfortunately, there was no ordering guaranty in the previous version. Some JVM give the properties in random order which leaded to unfortunate results in clusters
http://opensource.atlassian.com/projects/hibernate/browse/ANN-551

Is it currently supported to have a custom ordering for columns in the ddl?

I understand that you had to make the ordering alphabetic, to solve the random ordering problem when using different JVM's, but alphabetic ordering does not really work for me.

For example:
Suppose you have an Customer entity with the property's: lastName, firstName, mobilePhone, homePhone, faxNumber, dateOfBirth.
The property's are sorted by relevance (lastName is most important and dateOfBirth is nice to know).

When you perform a select query in the database, like select * from customer, you get a really strange result.
dateOfBirth, faxNumber, firstName, homePhone, lastName, mobilePhone.

Can't we just use the sequential POJO ordering, defined by the mapping file / annotation.

Regards,
Bas

No we can't as it is undefined by the VM and actually behave differently (as experienced in the JIRA issue). That's why I had to follow the alphabetic order.
When do you need to use select *, you're using Hibernate ;)

The other solution is to generate the DDL in a file and change it to match your tastes when going for production.